Mark Zuckerberg’s warning of “an intense year” are coming to pass as the lay-offs threatened mid-January will kick off today.
Notices will start landing in employees’ inboxes from this morning with cuts felt right across Europe, US, Asia and Africa.
Meta is keeping tight-lipped about exactly where the cuts will be felt; but there is sure to be updates as disgruntled staff contact the press.
“Performance Terminations”
Zuckerberg had warned that 5% of the company would lose their roles and that job cuts were to be tied to performance. “This is going to be an intense year, and I want to make sure we have the best people on our teams,” he said, adding: “I’ve decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low performers faster.”
Now, details are starting to emerge. The Information broke the story after having eyes on a memo from Meta’s Head of People Janelle Gale sent out on Friday.
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In it, she said that “performance terminations” would start today and would impact employees in more than a dozen countries. However, adds Reuters, employees in Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands have a reprieve “due to local regulations”.
This round of lay-offs is being handled differently from previous culls though as offices are being kept open today and, said Gale, the company would not be giving further details on its decisions.
Firing and Hiring at Meta
It is also being reported that on the same day as Gale’s memo went out, another, from VP of Engineering for Monetization Peng Fan, said that the company is also now looking out for new talent.
Fan asked staffers to reach out to people they knew who could quickly fill machine learning and other “business critical” engineering roles. “Thank you for your continued support in helping us achieve our accelerated hiring goals, and better align with our company’s priorities for 2025,” he wrote, stating that recruitment would kick off February 11.
AI Focus
Both the slimming down of the workforce and the quest to find new AI talent is a clear indication of where Meta’s focus lies. In a July 2024 letter, Zuckerberg stated, “This year, Llama 3 is competitive with the most advanced models and leading in some areas. Starting next year, we expect future Llama models to become the most advanced in the industry.”
This is ambitious indeed, especially considering the competition that the company is facing, not least from OpenAI, which already seems to have an in with the US Government.
Zuckerberg has a slightly cosier relationship now though with Donald Trump and is quite openly jostling for a place at the table as the President pushes his AI agenda with Project Stargate. But it will be a costly to keep his spot hence the job cuts and the laser focus on finding new staffers to achieve his AI ambitions.
